The elevator doors hissed shut, cutting off Simon Ashford’s shrill, blood-soaked threats, but the silence that rushed into the hallway was far from peaceful. It was a heavy, vibrating quiet, the kind that follows a lightning strike before the thunder rolls in.
Serena Ashford stood frozen in the center of the corridor. Her chest was heaving, her eyes wide and rimmed with a mix of residual terror and a sudden, jarring spark of something she hadn't felt in eight years: awe. She looked at the blood on the floor, then at the shattered nursing desk, and finally at the man standing before her.
Derek Faulkner looked like a mountain. His silhouette, framed by the harsh fluorescent lights of Riverbend General Hospital, was immovable. He didn't look like a "nobody" or a pretty boy anymore. He looke
